THE CURRENT CINEMA Out of Tragedy, S1tds I NCREDULITY is the first reac- . " L ' b " . b tlon to . 1m 0, a mOVIe a out the wives of Americans missing or imprisoned in Vietnam. It's set on an Air Force base in Florida In 1972, though its spiritual setting is a deterged "Peyton Place" -a movie that, like "Limbo," was directed by Mark Rob- son, a director of no distinction and no visible style. (A week after seeing his last film, "Happv Birthday , Wanda June," I couldn't remember who had made it. ) Yet Robson's impersonalit) is perfect for "Limbo;" because of his plodding, egalitarian attention to each detail, the movie can take up a "dan- gerous"-that is, war-related-subject in absolute safety. The look of the movie tells us it's not about the effects of the Vietnam war on the wives and children of those absent men; it's not even set in the America that the war has torn apart. It's about the perennial plight of women trying to cope, and it's set in a calibrated, canned dream world in which we know exactly how to read each nuance of feeling, how to in- terpret ever} inflection. It all fits to- gether: this world is so Pop-ugly-like old Coca-Cola billboards-that the stale, sweet emotions are right at home. Yet what are we to make of this vision? The film is a representation of a forIn of actual suffenng, but every- thing in it seems synthetic. And the syn- thetic begins to seem true. The words spoken are pitifully simp-ordinary: ". "" I f "" Y , d nIce, a ot 0 , ou re a won er- ful woman," "You have wonderful kids." The scriptwriters might have worked for the astronauts. "Limbo" has a frightening superficial realism- it's the same kind of fright we feel when we walk into a suburban super- market and see customers who look just like the people who polish and spray in TV commercials. These sanitized war wives, immaculately coiffed, tak- ing care of their storybook children, writing daily letters to their husbands, are coexistent with Billy Graharn and the President's Inaugural B.:llls. It's ap- parent that the mediocrity of their lives-the rooms devoid of reading matter, the absence of any sign of taste or thought-Is meant to guarantee the audience's sympathetic identification with them. Even to be "too involved" with the war might make them seem "unbalânced human beings" -not "redl people." So they don't listen to the news on the radio or watch it on TV; they don't even read a newspaper. If they knew anything, they might be controversial and off-putting. TheIr impeccable feminine ignorance makes them .:lcceptable mass-market heroines. They take you back: they might be d collection of Miss Rheingolds. Their innocence, the cinematography that looks like enlargements of Kodacolor snapshots of a family vacation, the sound of "You Belong to Me" on the radio all contrive to turn the Vietnarn war into the Second World War. The film mIght have come out of a time capsule buried in 1943-the "So Proudly We Hail" period of the sacn- fi . " h h f " clng women on t e orne, ront - except that it's not as gaudy. There are no vivid personalities now-no boozing broad, no nympho, no psycho, no hitch-and no wisecracks. It's not rneant to be fun; that's what's new about it-it's unrelieved. There's not a single false note of originality. The cliches come at you full face: the bright-eyed cheerleader- ingenue (Kate Jackson) married only two weeks before her husband went . , 1 " . 5: .". . 77 overseas and disappeared; the devout- Catholic redhead (Kathleen Nolan) with her four kIds and a husband who has been a prisoner for fi ve years; the 1 ich Southerner (Katherine ] ustice ) who refuses to accept the fact of her husband's death; the standby suitors, decent and honorable. Most of the wives we see are educating themselves or doing professional work, but they're Cclreer women as superior housewivLs. I hcir ordinariness is perfect, a form of intellectual virginity; they live, rnetclphorically, in a superrnarket. The 1110vic is almost uncannily condescend- ing in its touches-the orchid corsage given to the wife who goe<;; to greet her returning husbdnd, the CI ummv look of Christmas decorations in a house in Florida, the forties sound of the Inusic that cornrnents on the action. It's pure Pop, but lugubrious and ulti- mately baffling. This must have been the image of America that Antonioni was trying to get at in "Zabriskie Point;" Mark Robson, trying for . d k ". pOIgnancc an mass-rnal et SenSI- tivity," blunders into it. Robson has a knack for It, like Norman Rockwell; "Peyton Place" was probably his most , ':. : .",. )< -k: + .., J. : , <- ": - .} þ: > ... .' , ,:-' !J " t / /) " i: f' t... /// / ) ,....,<J "' .. ,:' -- , +) ,;' . . ' ,." ",' ':'" ," '--., / OJ"' "t 7;; J "' , ;. .... ;. t -: :Þ. c. " "t;:." , ,< ,,,:' > N : ;:' ß '. .'\ :,< + -:-.s. ...... . .. .. t..:.. ': .,.. <: ::... .:v . ;{ ;. r r- ' O,: N ':. . ;.. '" .... ,, ' t ' 4 '" + f fj tW " < ":.. , ^ < (." . .L' " , . " s < ';, , ,. .. .' )o.: ;. .:,. .,.. ..,. !, "' >/ i'\ -< "-:. "'y "' jt ,:, :: )y...t,.... . :-; '.,\- ....4 ..1; , f "<,,,. :4 .. t.: -:- .. "'\ #ð . '*""" ;+, f :} .: ;' ... ';,:": ot-'- " ...,,:{:' : ,: ,, I>'" ", ' 1 ' <<"", ..; '> ".1 k- ", (.< ':> ( '.rt. ,:' 'of(,.,: .....-:. ( ..^' .' ;< . '> 1 .-;, .:'>:' ... ... . :. þ < "": , ^ .'. . ,: * ((Belzeve me, g-ang-. Just because I've been g-zven my OVJn cubzcle doesn't mean I'm g-oing- to forg-et myoId friends."